The WalkUP Wake-Up Call: Michigan Metros

The Land Policy Institute is the research partner of the George Washington University School of Business Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis on this research, including Mark Wyckoff, senior associate director, and Mary Beth Graebert, associate director. Yue Cui, MSU research associate, provided statistical analysis and specialty datasets. Below is the release from LOCUS Smart Growth America about the report.

Walkable real estate development projects and places are on the rise nationwide. LOCUS has looked at how these trends are playing out in Atlanta, Washington, DC, and Boston. Today, we’re excited to unveil the fourth report in ourWalkUP Wake-Up Call series.

The WalkUP Wake-Up Call: Michigan Metros looks at development in seven Michigan metropolitan areas: Detroit-Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland, Lansing, Jackson, Kalamazoo-Battle Creek, Saginaw-Bay City-Midland, and Flint. Our analysis of these areas finds that in the most recent real estate cycle, 22 percent of all new income property development located in the 2.7 percent of land that is walkable urban. This share of new development is up from only 6 percent in the 1990s real estate cycle and 12 percent from the 2001-2008 cycle.

Walkable places’ increasing share of development is most likely a response to pent-up market demand. Only eight percent of the total housing stock is located in a walkable urban place and just half of that was built after 1960—mea

ning a significant portion may be obsolete. This is despite national polls suggesting that at least 40 percent of Americans would like to live in a walkable urban place. Demographics are also shifting to favor urban living: 64 percent of Michigan households have just one or two persons, the target market for walkable urbanism, and that percentage is rising.

This pent-up demand is reflected in rents and prices. Across all the Michigan Metros analyzed, average office rents in regionally significant walkable urban places are two percent higher than in comparable drivable locations. Retail rents are 13 percent higher, multifamily rental apartment rents are 28 percent higher, and for-sale residential prices are 50 percent higher. These are crude averages that hide significant variation among and within metro areas, but the broad implication is clear—there is pent up demand for walkable urban places in Michigan.

Nonetheless, progress is uneven. Places like Downtown Birmingham, Main Street in Ann Arbor, and Downtown Grand Rapids provide a glimpse of the full potential of walkable urbanism to create value. Downtown and Midtown Detroit have demonstrated how rapidly revitalization can occur over just the last five to seven years, while plans being made in Lansing for a bus-rapid transit corridor show the way forward. However, there is a longer list of walkable urban places that have not taken off. For some of these places, government support, aggressive placemaking, and a few pioneering developments may be enough to introduce dramatic change. For others, it may be more a question of time and an improvement in the overall regional economy.

All of the metro areas, if not the entire State of Michigan, has an economic, fiscal, and social equity interest in seeing these walkable places thrive. Although it has not been possible thus far to definitively prove causation, the circumstantial evidence is mounting that young, educated members of the workforce, the foundation of future economic development, want to live and work in walkable urban places. Previous research, confirmed again here, finds a positive correlation between the walkability of a metro area and the educational attainment of its residents, an important factor for economic performance. In the context of a state that is rightly concerned about brain drain, improving the quality and quantity of these walkable urban places must be a part of the policy discussion.